Like most municipalities where the coffers are going dry, the city has been trying to come up with new ways to generate revenue.

This time, it's on the backs of those who park illegally, don't move their car during a snow emergency or have totaled their car during an accident.

The City of Schenectady wants to collect its own $35 towing fee on top of the $95 charged by towing companies; impound fees would be $10 a day in addition to the estimated $20 a day the city's contracted towing companies currently charge. The fee would apply to tow calls initiated by city police only. Albany and Troy already charge such towing fees, and other municipalities nationwide are adopting such fees as a way to bring in much-needed dollars.

Towing companies in Albany pay the city back $25 per car, and in Troy it's $50. The two tow companies that are currently contracted by Schenectady to do the work, H and K and Bobars, wouldn't comment on the proposal.

A public hearing on the fee happens at Monday night's City Council meeting.

The city has already budgeted making $50,000 on the new towing fees this year, and $30,000 on the impound fee. In comparison, the City of Detroit right now is looking into a fee that would more than double the cost for vehicles towed from $75 to $200 — generating $4 million for that city.

This isn't the first time Schenectady has tried to tack on a fee to an already existing service. Mayor Gary McCarthy tried to impose another new revenue stream last year in the form of a $10 priority fee for obtaining immediate birth and death certificates. The state sets a limit of $10 per vital record, so the priority fee was a way around that law. But City Council refused to pass the new fee after funeral directors complained, and it was learned that it doesn't take the clerk's office more time to generate such certificates on demand.

As far as other revenue generators, Schenectady also wants to start pulling over trucks and checking their weight limits — estimating that such ticketing would generate another $100,000 this year.

The neighboring municipalities of Rotterdam and Glenville do not collect towing fees. Niskayuna does, but Supervisor Joe Landry said it's because the vehicles are towed to a town-owned impound lot that the police department oversees. Niskayuna charges $85 a car, and the towing company gets $65.

"We're not trying to make a ton of money. We're just trying to cover our cost," Landry said.

Even though the City of Schenectady does not have its own impound lot, McCarthy said that the fee can be imposed because the vehicles are "towed on the city's authority and released on the city's authority — we babysit them."